- Author: Lanie Keystone
Traveling is always an eye-opening experience; we learn so much and gather so many new and inspiring ideas. Our summer in British Columbia continues to be filled with such eye-opening surprises.
We are staying in a lovely area of Surrey, BC called Ocean Park/Crescent Beach. The city of Surrey is the fastest growing city in BC, outpacing its neighbor, Vancouver, and now reaching over 500,000 people. But it still feels like a quiet, much smaller town. My hunch is—it's the trees! And more importantly, it's the urban forests.
Many cities boast beautiful tree-lined streets or parks with lovely trees. Many cities and towns have laws or organizations that either protect existing trees, require permits for taking down trees and replacing them with new ones, or mandate that new developments have a certain minimum number of trees planted per each new home. That law is true for the whole state of California.
But Surrey, Vancouver, Toronto and many other Canadian cities go an amazing leap further…they provide for actual forests within the city! The town of Surrey has over 20 urban forests—including one that is just 15 steps out of our front door. It's a bountiful 128-acre resource for all to use. Picture Central Park in NYC. Now fill that space with mature, second growth trees and endless winding trails, ponds and meadows carved right in the middle of an area of homes, businesses and busy streets—and you have an urban forest.
These forests have multiple entries off of numerous streets and are created within a variety of neighborhoods and mix of socio-economic strata. Here, dogs are walked, school kids explore, elders stroll and thousands take advantage of this amazing resource filled with trees, ferns, ground cover, downed moss-covered logs, birds, and forest critters—all in a natural setting with a dizzying array of winding trails.
Urban Forestry has become such an important part of the Canadian culture and environment, that the University of British Columbia has an entire major and department designed to encourage future generations to research and develop new ways of using the natural environment for the greater good. And that includes creating more urban forests.
As Master Gardeners, we know the importance of such spaces—for the health of the planet, for the health of our communities and for our own health. Each time we take one of our daily walks into one of the vast urban forests, we feel renewed, refreshed and re-created. It's as if we are walking into a fairyland or onto sacred ground. Both, I believe, are true.
